Craigslist Listings Scraper

Extract structured data from Craigslist listings across all major categories with just a city name and optional keywords. Get titles, prices, descriptions, images, and metadata in seconds.

What is Craigslist Listings Scraper?

Craigslist Listings Scraper is a powerful web scraping tool built on the Apify platform that automates the extraction of classified listings from Craigslist across any city and category. Whether you're tracking housing markets, analyzing pricing trends for second-hand goods, monitoring job postings, or researching service providers, this scraper delivers clean, structured data ready for analysis or integration into your applications.

The scraper supports all major Craigslist categories including for-sale items, housing rentals and sales, job listings, and local services. It handles pagination automatically, extracts full listing details including descriptions and image galleries, and respects rate limits to ensure reliable data collection. Each extracted listing includes rich metadata such as posted dates, location information, and canonical URLs for easy verification and follow-up.

Ideal for market researchers, price comparison platforms, real estate professionals, recruitment agencies, and data scientists, this tool transforms unstructured Craigslist pages into actionable datasets. Configure your search with city subdomains, keywords, category filters, and result limits to get exactly the data you need without manual browsing or copy-pasting.

Data Fields

The scraper extracts the following fields for each Craigslist listing:

Field	Type	Description
title	string	The listing headline or title as posted by the seller/advertiser
price	string	The asking price exactly as displayed (e.g., "$45", "$1,200/mo", "Free")
location	string	Neighborhood or area within the city (e.g., "Capitol Hill", "Downtown")
description	string	Full text body of the listing with formatting cleaned
postedDate	string	ISO 8601 timestamp when the listing was originally posted
imageUrls	array of strings	All image URLs associated with the listing (thumbnails and full-size)
listingUrl	string	Direct link to the original Craigslist listing page
category	string	The category searched (for-sale, housing, jobs, or services)

Tutorial: How to Use Craigslist Listings Scraper

Step 1: Create Your Apify Account

Sign up for a free account at Apify.com if you don't already have one. New accounts include free platform credits to get started immediately.

Step 2: Find the Actor

Navigate to the Craigslist Listings Scraper page in the Apify Store or search for "Craigslist Listings Scraper" by lanky_quantifier.

Step 3: Configure Your Search

Enter the required city subdomain (the part before .craigslist.org, like "seattle" or "sfbay"). Select your desired category from the dropdown and optionally add search keywords to filter results.

Step 4: Set Result Limits

Adjust the "Max Results" field to control how many listings you want to extract. Start with a small number (10-25) for testing, then increase for production runs.

Step 5: Run the Actor

Click the green "Start" button. The scraper will begin extracting listings immediately. You can monitor progress in real-time through the run console.

Step 6: Review and Export Data

Once the run completes, preview your results in the "Dataset" tab. Data can be exported in JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or XML formats with a single click.

Step 7: Integrate or Schedule

Use the Apify API to integrate scraped data into your applications, or set up scheduled runs to automatically collect fresh listings daily or weekly.

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
city	string	Yes	—	Craigslist city subdomain (e.g., "seattle", "sfbay", "newyork", "losangeles"). Find your city at craigslist.org/about/sites
keywords	array of strings	No	[]	List of search terms to filter listings (e.g., ["vintage", "lamp"]). Listings must match all keywords.
category	string	No	"for-sale"	Category to search. Options: for-sale, housing, jobs, services
maxResults	integer	No	50	Maximum number of listings to extract (minimum: 1). Controls total dataset size.

Example Input

{
  "city": "seattle",
  "keywords": ["vintage", "lamp"],
  "category": "for-sale",
  "maxResults": 25
}

Example Output

[
  {
    "title": "Vintage brass desk lamp - mid century modern",
    "price": "$45",
    "location": "Capitol Hill",
    "description": "Beautiful solid brass desk lamp from the 1960s. Adjustable arm and shade. Works perfectly with standard bulb. Some patina adds to the vintage charm. No dents or major scratches. Must pick up - cash only.",
    "postedDate": "2026-02-10T21:13:42-0800",
    "imageUrls": [
      "https://images.craigslist.org/00a0a_abcd1234_600x450.jpg",
      "https://images.craigslist.org/00b0b_efgh5678_600x450.jpg",
      "https://images.craigslist.org/00c0c_ijkl9012_600x450.jpg"
    ],
    "listingUrl": "https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/fuo/d/vintage-brass-desk-lamp/7819234567.html",
    "category": "for-sale"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vintage Tiffany style lamp with stained glass",
    "price": "$120",
    "location": "Ballard",
    "description": "Gorgeous vintage table lamp with colorful stained glass shade in the Tiffany style. Bronze finish base. 18 inches tall. Excellent condition, all glass intact. Heavy and sturdy. Perfect for living room or bedroom. Serious buyers only.",
    "postedDate": "2026-02-09T14:27:15-0800",
    "imageUrls": [
      "https://images.craigslist.org/00d0d_mnop3456_600x450.jpg"
    ],
    "listingUrl": "https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/fuo/d/vintage-tiffany-style-lamp/7818912345.html",
    "category": "for-sale"
  },
  {
    "title": "Art Deco vintage floor lamp - working condition",
    "price": "$85",
    "location": "Fremont",
    "description": "1940s art deco floor lamp with original fabric shade. Chrome finish. Rewired for safety. Three-way switch works great. Small tear in shade but still looks beautiful. Height: 5 feet. Can deliver for gas money.",
    "postedDate": "2026-02-08T09:45:33-0800",
    "imageUrls": [
      "https://images.craigslist.org/00e0e_qrst7890_600x450.jpg",
      "https://images.craigslist.org/00f0f_uvwx2468_600x450.jpg"
    ],
    "listingUrl": "https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/fuo/d/art-deco-vintage-floor-lamp/7818567890.html",
    "category": "for-sale"
  }
]

Legal and Ethical Considerations

This scraper is designed for legitimate research, market analysis, and personal use in compliance with applicable laws and Craigslist's Terms of Use. Users are responsible for ensuring their data collection activities comply with local regulations including data protection laws, intellectual property rights, and website terms of service. Always respect robots.txt directives and implement reasonable rate limiting to avoid overloading Craigslist servers.

Scraped data should not be used for spam, harassment, or republication of listings without permission from the original posters. Commercial use of scraped data may be subject to additional legal restrictions depending on your jurisdiction and intended application. When in doubt, consult with legal counsel to ensure compliance with relevant laws including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) in the United States and GDPR in the European Union.

Pricing

This actor runs on the Apify platform with consumption-based pricing. Scraping 100 Craigslist listings typically consumes approximately $0.02-0.05 in platform credits, depending on listing complexity and image counts. New Apify accounts receive free credits to test the scraper before committing to paid plans.

For high-volume scraping (1,000+ listings per day), consider Apify's subscription plans which offer significantly better per-unit pricing and priority support. Residential proxies are recommended for large-scale operations to avoid IP blocking, which may add $0.50-2.00 per 1,000 listings to your total costs.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many listings can I scrape per run?

You can extract any number of listings by adjusting the maxResults parameter. For large datasets (500+ listings), consider breaking your scrape into multiple runs across different keywords or cities to improve reliability and speed.

Which cities are supported?

All Craigslist city subdomains are supported. Common examples include seattle, sfbay, newyork, losangeles, chicago, boston, atlanta, miami, denver, portland, and hundreds more. Visit craigslist.org/about/sites for the complete list.

What if a listing doesn't have a price or images?

The scraper extracts all available data but some listings legitimately omit certain fields. Missing data will appear as null (for single values) or empty arrays (for image lists). This is normal behavior and reflects the actual listing content.

Can I scrape multiple cities in one run?

Currently, each run targets a single city subdomain. To scrape multiple cities, either run the actor multiple times with different city values or use Apify's batch processing features to parallelize multiple city scrapes simultaneously.

How fresh is the scraped data?

The scraper extracts live data directly from Craigslist at the moment you run it. Listings include postedDate timestamps showing when they were originally posted. For monitoring applications, schedule regular runs (hourly/daily) to track new listings as they appear.

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